Leader, Software Engineering

Applicants must be available to work onsite at the RTP, NC office. Meet the Team

The Splunk Search Experience backend team sits at the core of the Splunk Platform, powering Cisco Data Fabric vision to transform machine data into AI‑ready intelligence.

We are seeking an experienced engineering leader to guide a team of passionate distributed systems engineers in building the next‑generation, highly scalable search platform that fuels AI‑driven workflows across our products.

In this role, you will lead the evolution of Splunk’s flagship search engine capabilities, ensuring the platform meets the next wave of customer scale, performance, and reliability needs. You will partner with engineering, product, and cross‑functional teams to deliver high‑performance, efficient, and resilient backend search services that delight customers.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high‑performing team of backend and distributed‑systems engineers.

• Drive the architecture, scalability, and reliability of Splunk’s search backend to support massive data volumes and advanced AI‑driven use cases.

• Partner with product and platform teams to define long‑term strategy for search services and execution roadmaps.

• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, operational rigor, and customer‑centric innovation.

• Own delivery of high‑quality, performant backend features and services that power search across the Splunk ecosystem.

• Champion best practices in distributed systems, cloud‑native design, reliability engineering, and performance optimization.

• Bachelors + 12 years of related experience, or Masters + 8 years of related experience, or equivalent related work experience

• 5+ years of experience building, managing, and leading engineering teams.

• Proven experience leading backend or distributed systems engineering teams.

• Strong expertise in building and scaling large‑scale, high‑performance systems.

• Deep understanding of search technologies, indexing systems, distributed storage, large‑scale data platforms, and information‑retrieval systems.

• Demonstrated ability to drive technical strategy, execution, and cross‑team collaboration.

• Passion for solving complex systems problems and delivering customer‑impacting results.

• Experience with cloud‑native technologies and running cloud‑based services.

• Experience with internal workings of large‑scale query engines such as Presto or AWS Athena.

At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.

The starting salary range posted for this position is $ to $ and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including incentive compensation*, equity, or benefits.

Individual pay is determined by the candidate’s hiring location, market conditions, job‑related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long‑term disability…